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ARPA-E Projects Attract More Than $625 Million in Private Funding

At the 5th ARPA-E Summit, Private-sector Funding, Start-up Companies, and Public Partnerships Highlighted

National Harbor, MD –The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) today announced that the Agency’s innovative projects are making great strides towards transforming the way Americans use and produce energy.

To date, 22 ARPA-E projects have attracted more than $625 million in private-sector follow-on funding after ARPA-E’s investment of approximately $95 million. In addition, at least 24 ARPA-E project teams have formed new companies to advance their technologies, and more than 16 ARPA-E projects have partnered with other government agencies for further development.

Over the past five years, ARPA-E has played a critical role in answering the President’s call to develop a domestic, all-of-the-above approach to produce, store, and use energy. To date, ARPA-E has invested over $900 million across 362 projects through 18 focused programs and two open funding solicitations (OPEN 2009 and OPEN 2012). In the past year alone, ARPA-E has launched focused programs to improve techniques to manufacture light-weight metals, develop robust battery chemistries and architectures for electric vehicles, biologically convert natural gas to liquids, create innovative semiconductor materials for improved power conversion, and use solar concentration techniques for hybrid solar converters.

“As ARPA-E approaches its 5th anniversary, our projects are demonstrating tangible technical and market progress in transforming America’s energy future,” said ARPA-E Acting Director Cheryl Martin. “The ARPA-E Summit provides project teams with an opportunity to showcase their accomplishments and to collaborate with other energy innovators to help reach the next stage of development through private-sector funding, new company formation, and strategic partnerships.”

At 4:30 PM ET today, Martin will discuss the progress with former U.S. Representative Bart Gordon, one of the legislators who established ARPA-E, on the main stage at the Agency’s fifth annual Energy Innovation Summit.

Four project videos debuting at this year’s Summit highlight these recent achievements, as well as ARPA-E’s catalytic role in convening energy technology communities. The new videos feature project teams from Harvard University, General Electric, Boston University, University of Florida, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Georgia Technical Institute of Technology, Primus Power, Oregon State University, and REL. The videos are available on ARPA-E’s YouTube channel. The Technology Showcase is a major Summit attraction, featuring over 250 energy technologies. Many of these Showcase technologies are funded by ARPA-E and displayed publicly for the first time at the Summit.

The full list of ARPA-E projects that have secured private-sector funding, formed start-up companies and fostered public partnerships is available at http://go.usa.gov/B6rd.

The annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit brings together over 2,000 leaders from academic, business, and government to discuss cutting-edge energy issues, share knowledge, network, and cultivate relationships that can help advance innovative energy technologies into the marketplace. Summit keynote speeches and panel presentations span the course of three days and range from high-level policy overviews to focused discussions on developing and deploying specific technologies. For more information about the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, please visit http://www.arpae-summit.com.